Tag: MeetUp

RaceJoy had the most usage of relay teams at a single race since its inception at this last weekend’s Colfax Marathon in Denver, Colorado with close to 700 teams using RaceJoy. RaceJoy recently released an industry breakthrough where it virtually ties relay team phones together to provide progress alerts for the team. Colfax is one of the largest relay marathons in the country and offers various relay team options, from two-person teams to five-person teams.

Relay teams using RaceJoy have two ways to be tracked using RaceJoy. The first is the ability to see where team members are on an interactive map showing the official Colfax Marathon course. RaceJoy tracks the GPS location of the participant’s phone. So, people were able to see each other’s location in real-time. Also, as team members drew close to one another, they received NearMe alerts that included a cowbell alert sound along with a pop-up message.

The second form of tracking includes Team Progress Alerts when team members cross each mile on the course. Alerts are issued in audio format to the runner on the course and as in-app notifications to the rest of the team. Alerts include location, elapsed time for the team, split time for current leg, and estimated finish time for the team. Relay teams and individual runners clearly made full use of RaceJoy at Colfax with 78,000 progress alerts being issued in RaceJoy.

Relay teams could also use RaceJoy to support and communicate with each other during the Colfax Marathon using RaceJoy’s Send-a-Cheer feature. We saw more than 11,000 cheers delivered on race day. People could send pre-loaded audio cheer clips and ‘Can’t Touch This’ was the top cheer used.

Also, runners and supporting spectators made full use of RaceJoy’s text-to-cheer feature with more than 1,800 messages being delivered. This is where people can type in a custom message and it is delivered in audio format.

Most marathons offer a relay component to give more choices to runners. However, there aren’t many options in the running industry for tracking relay teams, and using the traditional bib tag tracking is typically very limited, if offered at all. Plus, many of the established larger events are hesitant to introduce new technology to their races. We want to recognize the race organizers of the Colfax Marathon for embracing RaceJoy’s technology to provide an interactive experience for their participants and supporting spectators. They also did a lot to help educate people on the new technology to ensure a positive experience. Thank you, Colfax Marathon, for helping us to change the race experience!

This coming weekend brings another relay focused event on the other side of the country at Vermont City Marathon. RunVermont was the first marathon with a significant relay focus to offer RaceJoy. If you have a group of friends you like doing relays with, both Vermont City Marathon and Colfax Marathon offer a great race experience in beautiful parts of our country!

RaceJoy is rolling out split pace alerts for those using GPS-based progress alerts. RaceJoy’s progress alerts are typically issued at every mile for running and walking events and every five to 10 miles for cycling and longer distance events. The alerts include information like location, elapsed time, overall average pace, estimated finish time, and now, current split pace time between the course points.

Users of RaceJoy have requested this feature be added so they could manage their performance during the race. By providing real-time split pace information participants can gauge if they need to slow down or pick up their pace to meet personal race goals.

The alerts RaceJoy issues are sent to participants in audio format. Click to hear a sample!

RaceJoy offers many other interactive race day features, including live, real-time participant tracking on the race’s official course.

Spectators also receive progress alerts for tracked participants. These are provided as in-app notifications.

Other race day features include Send-a-Cheer, allowing supporting family and friends to send fun, motivational cheers, NearMe alerts and MeetUp. To learn more about all the race day features available in RaceJoy, download the app to begin exploring today.

Many of RaceJoy’s features, like the new current split pace, come from the participants sharing their needs for race information and ideas about race day interaction. Feel free to share any of your ideas by sending an email to rockstar@racejoy.com.

Time is running out to take advantage of RaceJoy’s discounted buyout pricing. With the buyout races can offer RaceJoy’s advanced GPS Tracking and cheers for free to unlimited participants and spectators!

The 20% discount pricing ends March 31 and makes RaceJoy’s advanced runner tracking affordable for any race. If your race is scheduled at a later date, you can still take advantage of this great discount by purchasing the buyout before the promotion ends.

Pricing for the buyout varies and is based upon the number of participants and the course distance:

Flat Buyout Pricing Discount (Total Participants Across All Events)

*Call for events larger than 15,000 participants.

Participant Value, Sponsor Value, and Race Value!

Races that purchase RaceJoy’s buyout are able to deliver a truly innovative race experience to participants and spectators including free:

Live, real-time tracking along the course

GPS-based progress alerts at every mile with pace and estimated finish time

Send-a-Cheer including Text-to-Cheer for truly personalized messages

NearMe alerts as tracked participants draw near

Many races are having a single sponsor cover RaceJoy and give them prominent recognition in RaceJoy with sponsor banner ads, customized progress alerts, and logo placements in users’ Facebook and Twitter posting. In addition, sponsors offering RaceJoy are provided an effective tool to reach a broader consumer base that embraces remote spectators. Read this blogabout sponsor value through the buyout.

Races also receive:

Listing in Featured Races area in RaceJoy for cross promotion

Custom, basic race information

Logo placements

Link to race website

Customized banner ads

Interactive course map(s)

Custom GPS alerts to showcase race/sponsor

Countdown/start clock

Customizable Progress Alert

Race Branded Home Page

Races Across Country Offering Free RaceJoy

Races across the country are offering free live tracking in RaceJoy! Races either offer RaceJoy as their exclusive tracking option or as an additional continuous tracking option to complement their traditional timing mat progress alerts.

We have seen that those that choose the buyout option to offer RaceJoy’s interactive race day features for free gain higher adoption from race participants and supporting spectators. Read this blog about how free tracking relates to higher usage rates at races. This translates to greater promotion for the race and sponsors.

Some of the races offering RaceJoy’s interactive features for free are:

California Classic Weekend

Folsom Blues Breakout

Two Cities Marathon & Half

Steamboat Marathon

Rehoboth Seashore Marathon and Half

Tomoka Marathon

Valparaiso Half Marathon

Kentucky Ale Horse Capital Marathon

KY History Half Marathon

Urban Bourbon Half Marathon

Shipyard Maine Coast Marathon

Rock Lobster Relay

Shipyard Old Port Half Marathon

Maine Marathon

Annapolis Running Classic

Fifth Third River Bank Run

Milford Labor Day 30K

Beauty and the Beach Run

Wineglass Marathon

Flying Pig Marathon

HOKA ONE ONE Columbus 10K

Alamo 13.1

Zion Half Marathon

Vermont City Marathon

Lake Monona 20K

Madison Half Marathon

Lake Mills Triathlon

Wisconsin Triterium Triathlon

Devil’s Challenge Triathlon

Madison Marathon

Relay Iowa

RaceJoy Ready Your Race – Simple Process

To get your race loaded in RaceJoy is a very simple process. We just need an electronic version of your course map and then for you to let your participants know you are offering RaceJoy. You can easily get your race loaded into RaceJoy through RaceJoy’s Websiteor on your race’s RunSignUp dashboard. We require a two-week minimum load time.

Races that want to offer RaceJoy are still able to offer the free-to-the-race option in which the participant and spectator pay 99 cents at a given race.

Contact us for more information about the Buyout Discount before the promotion ends on March 31 and offer your race for free to participants and spectators.

The 11th Annual New Year’s Day Dash will be held on January 1, 2016, at Quaker Steak & Lube in Middleton, WI. This race offers two course options a 5-mile chip-timed run and 2-mile walk. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Huntington’s Disease Society of America. They start the year off right with a post race party at Quaker Steak and Lube, including wings, Wisconsin Brewing Company beer, great prizes, giveaways and New Year’s Day bowl games on big screen TV’s!

What a great way to start off the New Year!

To add on to this fun race experience, race organizers are offering RaceJoy’s GPS phone tracking, GPS alerts and cheers as a free service to participants and supporting spectators! Each runner and walker who carries their phone will receive GPS progress alerts at every mile on the course and have access to live phone tracking and RaceJoy’s Send-a-Cheer feature.

Supporting spectators, onsite and from the comfort of their homes, can also receive these GPS alerts and are able to watch the runners move along the course in a map view. Friends and family members will also be able to send fun cheers with RaceJoy’s Send-a-Cheer feature to help motivate their tracked participants. They can choose to send pre-recorded fun cheers or craft a custom cheer with RaceJoy’s text-to-cheer feature.

The New Year’s Day Dash race organizers, Race Day Events, LLC, are offering RaceJoy’s technology as a free service to all participants and supporting friends and family. Typically, there is a 99 cents per race upgrade fee for these features.

We hope you enjoy the race and have an amazing 2016!

If you’d like to have your race loaded into RaceJoy, you can send your course map in electronic format (KML, GPX or link to MapMyRun map) to addrace@racejoy.com. Buyout options are available.

In its 38th year, the Cape Cod Marathon Weekend delivered an innovative race experience to race participants and their supporting fans with RaceJoy. Hosted by Falmouth Track Club, the race is put on by runners who know what runners truly want in a race experience. The race organizers provided RaceJoy’s full premium experience as a complimentary service to its participants and spectators.

Thanks to race organizers, people were treated to a unique race experience with all of RaceJoy’s bells and whistles, including two forms of runner tracking with official race timed progress alerts and GPS tracking, instant race results, audio cheers, and key race information.

More than 2,300 people took advantage of RaceJoy’s technology over the course of the Cape Cod Marathon Weekend. This represents a 120% usage rate (includes spectators and participants), This is some of the highest usage percentages we’ve seen! Way to embrace technology, runners and fans!

Runners took advantage of the free phone tracking option the race was providing (typically there is a 99 cents upgrade fee) with close to 700 people carrying their phones. Spectators from around the country were tracking participants as their blue dot moved on the map and knew exactly where their runner was on the course.

Live Tracking on Race Day!

Spectators were also able to track runners by receiving official race timed progress alerts from the start, midway and finish. Participants received these on the course and are able to review their splits in RaceJoy at any time. RaceJoy sent out more than 13,200 progress alerts as runners and walkers crossed milestones along the course.

RaceJoy delivered these alerts by integrating with the race’s stellar timing service provider, Granite State Race Services. They used ChronoTrack timing equipment and were great to work with and provided a high quality service. We display what we get and they were spot on!

Many Cape Cod half marathon and full marathon participants opted in to have their progress posted to their personal Facebook and Twitter walls so their friends and family could be aware of their progress on the course.

By integrating with Granite State Race Services, RaceJoy also delivered immediate, scored results for finishers, including individual, overall and age-group results. Finishers were able to receive these within moments of crossing the finish line.

First Place Marathon Finishers!

Spectators and participants made use of RaceJoy’s Send-a-Cheer feature, sending more than 2,500 audio cheer clips. Users also got to test out RaceJoy’s newest Text-to-Cheer function. This feature allows users to type a custom message and have it immediately delivered in audio format to a selected participant. We saw some pretty creative and heartfelt cheers being sent on race day!

The Cape Cod Marathon Weekend takes place over two days, with the full marathon event held on Sunday with a relay team option. Relay members took full advantage of RaceJoy’s tracking features, including NearMe alerts where they received alerts when their teammate is drawing near so they can get ready for the handoff.

The Cape Cod Marathon Weekend offers participants many options for runners and walkers. The event offers a Marathon, Relay, Marathon Half, and Clam Chowdah Challenge for those who wanted to race both days. The race course is a crazy beautiful scenic, one-loop course that is mostly flat, but has a 70 foot, 1.5-mile climb. Add this one to your bucket list: http://www.capecodmarathon.com.

We’d like to issue a huge shout out to race organizers and the Falmouth Track Club for embracing innovation and including RaceJoy in such a historic race! Special thank you to Granite Timing and ChronoTrak for your superior technology and openness. And, of course, you the runner – it is for you that we built RaceJoy! And it is comments like the one below that tell us we are on the right track. Together, we are changing the race experience!

We are now offering the option for race organizers to provide participants and spectators with an innovative tracking experience through RaceJoy, a unique mobile platform that provides real-time interactive experiences for road race participants with their supporting spectators. Race organizers can now offer, as a complimentary service, RaceJoy’s innovative experience that includes live GPS tracking, GPS timing progress alerts, fun audio cheers and NearMe alerts. RunSignUp continues to offer a free-to-the-race option where the participant and spectator pay 99 cents for these features at a given race. RaceJoy “buyout” pricing varies based on the number of participants and course distance and starts at $450.

Bob Bickel, the founder of RunSignUp, says this about the new PhoneTrak buyout option:

“With the rising number of runners and walkers carrying their phones during the race and their increasing expectation that races provide some form of runner tracking, we have been receiving a growing number of race organizers requesting the option to provide RaceJoy’s tracking and cheer features free for their participants and spectators. We feel we are on the cusp of truly changing the race experience and are very excited by this response from the industry and the shared enthusiasm to offer an innovative experience through RaceJoy.”

RaceJoy has a unique focus on the race day experience and shares real-time information with participants and supporting spectators through the phone’s native technology.

According to the Running USA’s 2015 National Runner Survey, 57% of runners are now carrying their phones while running, increasing the opportunity to utilize the phone’s GPS capability as a tracking mechanism.

RaceJoy taps into this tracking capability to provide live GPS tracking on the course map, GPS-time performance alerts as they cross mile points on the course, and NearMe proximity alerts as a tracked participant draws near.

Race organizers can offer RaceJoy to round out their official race timed results information by providing additional real-time progress and performance information. RaceJoy also enables organizers to expand the race experience to embrace spectators by helping them to conveniently support the race participant real-time from the race site or remotely.

Any running, cycling or triathlon race can send in their course map to be loaded into RaceJoy and organizers can choose to either sponsor the features in RaceJoy or have the consumer pay the in-app 99 cents upgrade fee. Races receive:

Listing in RaceJoy

Interactive course map(s)

Countdown/Start clock

Basic event information

Those who choose to purchase the tracking and offer it as an added service, also receive logo placements, in-app banner ads and the ability to add specific points on the course map. For more information about the race buyout option, view our PhoneTrak Pricing Flyer.

Race organizers can request to have their race listed within RaceJoy at no charge or inquire about sponsoring RaceJoy for their event by sending their request to addrace@racejoy.com with an electronic version of their course map (GPX or KML file format or URL link) or enable under Go Race Day on RunSignUp’s platform.